


It's A Date

by stevergrsno (noxlunate)



Series: Happy Steve Bingo Fills [21]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Happy Steve Bingo, Kid Fic, M/M, Single Parents, single parent steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 02:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16652704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxlunate/pseuds/stevergrsno
Summary: Steve’s not quite enough of a romantic to say it’s love at first sight, but he also doesn’t want the date to end any time soon.Which is of course why his phone starts ringing halfway through dinner.In which Steve and Bucky can't quite seem to get through a date without something interrupting.





	It's A Date

**Author's Note:**

> Is this like loosely inspired by the two episodes I’ve seen of Single Parents? Yes, yes it is. 
> 
> Written to fill the Dates Get Interrupted square for my Happy Steve Bingo.

Steve is having what is probably the best first date he’s had in _years._

He’d been dreading it beforehand, had only really showed up because Natasha threatened him with a painful and humiliating death if he didn’t just go on this _one_ blind date with her friend from college that _‘I swear to god Rogers, he’s fucking perfect for you.’_

He wants to hate the guy, honestly, because he’s dreading the idea of showing up to the single parents meetup at the park tomorrow and facing Natasha’s smug, gloating face as she tells him _I told you so_. There’s no possible way to hate James “Call me Bucky” Barnes though.

He’s just too…

He’s too _perfect._

In that horrible not perfect way that means he’d dragged an elbow through the butter, his hair is making a valiant attempt at escaping the bun he’d put it in, and he’d gotten so enthusiastic while telling Steve about his job that at one point he’d completely missed his mouth with his food.

Steve’s not quite enough of a romantic to say it’s love at first sight, but he also doesn’t want the date to end any time soon.

Which is of course why his phone starts ringing halfway through dinner.

“I have to-” Steve starts, gesturing towards the phone where KATE is staring up at him in big, bold letters, “It’s the babysitter.”

“Hey, no, go ahead. I’m not gonna get offended if you take a few minutes to talk to your kid’s babysitter Steve.” Bucky says, his smile warm and easy, like he really means it.

Steve takes him at his word, picking up the phone with a “What's up, Katie?”

“Hey Mr. Rogers. It’s not a beautiful day in the neighborhood tonight.” Kate say and Steve would groan at the insistence to carry on what is a truly terrible bit but it sounds like Ruthie is crying in the background and he can’t think straight once he notices it.

“What’s going on?”

“There’s been some, um, projectile vomiting? Like, full on exorcist sort of shit. I think the kiddo might be sick.”

“Shit, okay, I’ll be home as soon as possible- Bucky, can you-” But Bucky’s already on it, asking a passing waiter for the check and Steve breathes a sigh of relief, “Is she okay? Is she still throwing up? Put her on.”

“She’s not puking anymore, just keeps telling me she wants her daddy.” Kate says, and then, “Ruthie, sweetie, here’s your dad.”

“Daddy?” Oh god, she’s calling him _Daddy._ She started claiming recently that six is _much too old_ to call him Daddy, so she must be feeling pretty damn terrible.

“Hey gumdrop. How ya feelin? Think you can hang in there until I get there?” He asks, digging into his pocket for his wallet. Bucky waves him off, handing his card directly to the waiter. Hopefully, if Bucky doesn’t decide he never wants to see him again after Steve bails on their date halfway through, he can insist on paying next time.

“Yeah. Yeah. I can make it.” Ruthie says and Steve can hear the hitch in her breathing as she sucks up tears, can practically see the firm set of his daughter’s jaw.

 _God_ , she’s too much like him.

 

When Steve hangs up the phone Bucky’s there at his shoulder, guiding Steve out of the restaurant and stepping onto the curb to flag down a cab.

Steve barely notices that he’s joined Steve in the cab until they’re pulling up to his building and Steve’s stumbling out of the car with Bucky following.

Steve stares for probably a moment too long, his brain struggling to process how this beautiful man just followed him home to his sick kid.

“I didn’t- I mean, I can leave from here. I didn’t want to assume anything, but you seemed pretty distracted and I just- I wanted to make sure you got home safe, but now I'm realizing that was kind of-”

“ _Bucky,”_ Steve interrupts, feeling a smile break across his face, “ _Thank you._ I get- I guess you could say I don’t do well when Ruth’s sick, so thank you.” 

When Ruth gets sick Steve can never help but picture her, born too soon and hooked up to a million machines in the NICU. She’s healthy as a horse these days, six years old and vibrant as can be, but Steve can never quite forget how touch and go it’d been at first.

Bucky’s shoulders seem to relax, the smile on his face matching Steve’s as he nods, “I get it. I mean, I don’t _get it_ get it, but I get it. She’s your kid, you’re not gonna do well when she’s not okay.”

“We’ll reschedule?” Steve asks, rocking back on his heels a little, his gaze drifting towards the door and Ruth behind it even as he wants to make sure they do this again sometime.

“I wouldn’t dream of anything else.” Bucky says, his smile somehow seeming warmer.

 

Steve ends up awake most the night, keeping a careful eye on Ruthie until he passes out slumped over in a chair next to her bed.

When he wakes up there’s a crick in his neck, an awful ache in his spine and a text from Bucky to reschedule their date.

 

Fifteen minutes into their second date Steve’s phone starts buzzing with roughly eighteen text messages before ringing insistently in Steve’s pocket.

“I need your help,” Peter says the moment Steve picks up, desperation palpable through the phone, “Ruthie started a mutiny, Ben backed her up, Nika is proclaiming herself the new world leader and the twins have taken a bookshelf and won’t let anyone pass. _No one else is answering their fu-reaking phones.”_

“I’ve gotta-” Steve starts, but Bucky is already steering him by the arm out of the museum and into a cab, “We’re on our way.”

“ _We?”_ Peter asks, but Steve is already hanging up.

 

When they get to Peter’s apartment there’s a screaming infant, the Howlett twins are doing some sort of war cry as they ricochet back and forth through the hallway, and Nika comes flying off the top of a bookcase with a yell of “UNCLE BUCKY!”

Bucky catches the flying six year old without even a blink of surprise and Nika levers herself up and onto Bucky’s shoulders, catching great big hunks of his hair like they’re reins.

Steve casts a look around for Ruthie and finds her tucked under the dining table using tempera paint to ‘decorate’ little Ben Wilson’s face. And his arms. And also the bottom of Peter’s table.

“ _Ruth Aletta Rogers.”_

Ruth squeaks and the tube of paint goes flying and smacks poor Ben in the face.

“Did you start a mutiny?” Steve asks, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to look as stern as possible as he asks a question he would have never dreamed of having to ask his daughter a few years ago

“ _No.”_ Ruth insists, her arms crossing across her chest in a mirror image of Steve, “We voted him out of his position of power. In a democratic society there are no dictators.”

“Viva la revolution.” Ben intones beside Ruth and then without looking at each other they raise their fists and do a fist bump that transitions into a complicated handshake.

Steve presses a hand to his temples, taking a moment to ask God how the hell his kid just came up with _that._ “Peter’s not a dictator Ruthie, he’s your babysitter.”

Nika has apparently abandoned her post using Bucky as a jungle gym and has squeezed herself under the table to sit on the other side of Ruthie. The three kids sit shoulder to shoulder, a united force against what is apparently the tyranny of parental dictatorship and Steve makes a note to remind himself to text Natasha and Sam later with every regret he has over letting these three become such good friends.

 

The next four dates end similarly.

On the third Steve gets called home when Ruth breaks her leg trying to imitate her favorite superhero. Bucky sits with them in the waiting room, helping Steve distract Ruthie from the pain, and when she gets fitted with a bright green cast Bucky’s the first one to sign it after Steve.

On the fourth the cold that Steve has been fighting for the past week hits full force during the soup course and Bucky hustles him home and tucks him into bed.

On the fifth Kate calls and tells Steve that they’ve been _poisoned_ by the Chinese food and he needs to come home before she expires from the deadly bacteria infecting her and Ruth’s bodies. She’s not _actually_ dying, but that doesn’t change the fact that Steve and Bucky spend the night feeding Ruth ginger ale and watching bad movies after Bucky takes Kate home to be looked after by her parents.

On the sixth Peter calls and says “I can’t get him to _sleep. How do I make him sleep? Why won’t he sleep Steve?!”_ and they spend the night putting little Michael to sleep and attempting to sooth Peter and then MJ when they come up with the bright idea to facetime MJ in Stanford.

“I have _so many finals._ And I miss home _so much,”_ MJ says, misty eyed.

“I miss you being home so much,” Peter says, on the edge of visibly weepy, “I don’t think I’ve slept in four days.”

“I don’t think _I’ve_ slept in four days.”

Steve, trying to make some sort of headway on washing the dishes in Peter’s sink, shares a look with Bucky as he dries.

“They’re a little intense, huh?” Bucky says when MJ says _“I love you you giant fucking weirdo,”_ and Peter responds with an incredibly sappy sounding _“I love you too. So so much. ”_

“Oh yeah, but they’re young,” Steve says, shrugging a little as he passes another dish over to Bucky, “Plus she’s there, and he’s here, and they’ve got Michael. It kinda makes sense they’d be a little intense.”

Bucky turns, leaning against the counter as he looks at Steve for a long moment. Steve does his best not to squirm under his gaze, instead intently scrubbing at an already clean plate. Beside him, Bucky opens his mouth, closes it like he’s changed his mind, and then after another pause says, “You’re a good guy Rogers, you know that?”

 

“Uh, hey man, sorry about last night by the way,” Peter says at the park the next day.

Natasha perks up as though sensing a story she hasn’t heard, sliding her sunglasses down her nose and leaning forward off the picnic table precariously.

Steve hears a screech of “ATTAAAAACK” from the direction of the playground, an oof, and then an “I’M OKAY!” and decides it’s not quite important enough to abandon his prime seat in the folding chair Sam brought and then stupidly abandoned.

He does however scoot forward just enough to knock a foot against Peter’s knee where he’s sitting on the ground bouncing Michael and making weird faces at him.

“Seriously, it’s no problem. Bucky and I were happy to help.” Steve says, hoping to end the whole awkward thankfulness thing _soon._

“Oh, _Bucky_ was with you was he?” Natasha asks, the sunglasses now slid up and onto the top of her head so that she can fix the full force of her gaze on Steve. In a way she’s saving him, but in another she’s about to put him through a whole other sort of torture.

“We were on a date. You knew that.” Steve says, hoping to push right through it and maybe avoid it being too painful.

“What’s that, date number six?” Natasha asks, her smile shark sharp. Sam scoots forward, watching like this is the best show he’ll see all day.

“Technically it’s our sixth time rescheduling our first date.”

“Technically I’d say that him going with you to whatever interrupts them means it’s at least a solid three.”

“Technically I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Technically,” Peter breaks in, interrupting what was sure to be a long and torturous back and forth between Steve and Natasha, “I was gonna ask how the hell you made your kids sleep when they were Michael’s age.”

Sam deflates when it becomes apparent that Steve and Natasha aren’t going to escalate.

“I don’t get what the fuss is about,” Logan says around a cigar, “You just put the kid down in it’s crib, grab a beer and go watch the game. They’ll go to sleep once they realize crying aint gonna get them anywhere.”

Four heads swivel to look at Logan with incredulous looks.

It’s Sam who breaks the silence however, with “Oh c’mon man, I know for a fact you’re full of shit. You still sing those babies goddamn lullabies.”

“I’ve got no clue what you’re talking about. Sure you didn’t bump your head somewhere Wilson?”

 

“We’re ending this curse,” Steve says the next time Bucky shows up for a date.

“How do you intend to do that?” Bucky doesn’t sound skeptical, not exactly. Mostly he’s got the sort of smile that makes Steve think he’s amused by all of this.

“We’re not going on a date,” Steve says, dragging Bucky into his apartment before he can argue.

“Forgive me, but I’m not seein how this breaks the curse Stevie.”

“Because if we don’t go on a date then there’s no date to interrupt.” Steve explains patiently, “So instead of going on a date tonight, you’re going to eat dinner with me and Ruthie and then when Ruthie’s bedtime rolls around we’re watching a movie.”

Bucky doesn’t even take the time to consider Steve’s plan and Steve gets a little caught up in the smile that’s suddenly spread across Bucky’s face and the hand on his wrist tugging him in.

“I’m gonna kiss you now.”

“I don’t know, maybe I’m not a kissing after just one date kinda guy Buck.”

“Way I see it, six unfinished dates is practically three full dates.”

“Oh god, that’s exactly what Natasha said,” Steve says with a groan, the words barely out of his mouth before Steve’s back is up against the door and Bucky’s lips are on his own.

As far as first kisses go it’s definitely one of the better ones Steve’s been a part of. Bucky’s warm and solid against him, the kiss gentle and almost hesitant at first but somehow enough to leave Steve’s head spinning.

When Bucky pulls back Steve doesn’t give him much of a chance to get away, getting a handful of hair and pulling Bucky back in.

“Come eat dinner with me and my kid, Buck.” Steve says when they _finally_ pull apart.

 

They make it through all of dinner, Steve tucking Ruth into bed, and then all of a movie. They even get to the _credits._

Steve’s spent at least half of it waiting for one of their phones to ring, or Ruthie to have a nightmare, or even for some catastrophic end of the world event to happen.

“Buck,” Steve starts, swinging one leg over Bucky’s and settling in his lap, hands braced on Bucky’s chest, “We broke the curse.”

“You think that means we can get through a whole date without one of us having an emergency then?” Bucky asks, hands settling onto Steve’s hips, warm and solid.

“Only one way to find out.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream about things with me on [tumblr!](http://stevergrsno.tumblr.com/tagged/my-writing)


End file.
